The Beginning of the Good News

Atmospheric rivers … what a concept. Well, it seems the Pacific Northwest is the new home of them. At least this past week; we’re now on number 4 I think. True, they keep the terrestrial rivers full and the trees green and the mountains covered with snow.

Also true that they now remind me that we are in Advent. Just goes to show you how easily reference points shift; when I was a boy it was the first snowfall that let us know Christmas was right around the corner.

I always think this is a curious time of year, caught someplace between secularism and the holy. There is expectation, yes, and a glimmer of hope. There is excitement and all kinds of busy-ness from decorating to baking to shopping to … (fill in your own blank here). In the church it is a new year that opens with prayer and solemnity and with calls to the internal, which is to say we are called to turn inward to discover the ways in which we disconnect ourselves from each other and thus from God. Still, this time of year we all know what is coming soon and we have in our hearts the knowledge of the joy that is coming our way.

The prophet Isaiah is instructed by God [Isaiah 40:1-11] to “speak tenderly” and to “comfort” God’s people. Way back in 1994 I was living and working in New York City when I first encountered the Gay Games. I had no idea there even was such a thing. But one morning upon awakening and realizing I didn’t need to go to my office at the university I decided to wander down to the bodega on the corner and get a newspaper and a bagel (usually I would acquire these at Penn Station running to catch my train). Of course, it was a brilliantly sunny summer day! At the bodega I recognized the owner (of course) but nobody else, which was odd, and also it was odd that the place was crowded. I was barely awake, but slowly it began to dawn on me that it seemed like everybody in there was gay. It was a strange realization frankly. I sort of chuckled, then walking back to my apartment through crowds (I lived in Chelsea, which was then the heart of the gayborhood) I realized everybody around me seemed to be gay. And I had the odd thought “Oh, this is how they (i.e., straight people) feel all the time!” And I was comforted.

I was comforted to have known, if only for an instant, what it felt like for once in my life to be “normitive,” to be one of the “regular” majority. To let down my walls and just be me. It was glorious. Talk about “rough places plain” and “glory … revealed” and “all people see it together.”

I know I’ve written often here about the 1998 Amsterdam Gay Games; it was right after my ordination and it was a powerful time in my spiritual life. And the opportunity to be there at that time and to experience this sense yet again and for two weeks this time was a real gift.

We are too often afraid to look around us and see that the words of the prophets are not predictions about some dim future, but rather, they are revelations of our own reality.

So as I go about my daily life I no longer find myself in crowds of young gay men (more’s the pity) but I do live in a world of love created by the synchrony of my relationships, especially with my husband, who is clearly the greatest gift in my life as well.

In that realization, that this is the life given to me, that this is the glory love creates for me, is the sense of the critical importance of walking in love. When we walk in love we dwell in peace, and there in that place is where mercy and truth have met together [Psalm 85:7-13], for love produces peace which is the mother of mercy which can only thrive in truth.

I’ll say it again, that prophecy is not prediction but is revelation of our own truth, the reality about our own path into the dimension of love. There is no human time in the dimension of love, rather God’s time, which is all time all at once, forms the parameters of love. Love once experienced, once attained, is eternal [2 Peter 3:8-15a]. A glimmer is forever. The instant of realizing that there is a world full of LGBTQ+ people who God created in God’s own image—just that instant—becomes in my heart a pathway for walking in love each day. We are loved, we are created by love, we are called to love. Peter writes “we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home” … therefore we must “strive to be found … at peace.”

That brings us to the beginning of the good news” [Mark 1:1-8]. The good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is the pathway into the dimension of love. It is heralded by repentance—a reminder always to return to walking in love–which means connection, which means life eternal in the dimension of love.

2 Advent Year B 2023 RCL (Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 Benedixisti, Domine; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Enlightening The Eyes of my Gay Heart

Growing up, I often tell young LGBTQ folks now, I didn’t know I was “gay.” The reason I say that is because we didn’t have that in those days. Or rather, I thought gay was what the yuletide was what with decked halls and all that. I didn’t know I could be a man who loved a man for life (or even for awhile). All I saw in the world was or appeared to be heterosexual. So I didn’t know there were any options.

Then again, I knew very well to whom I was attracted emotionally and sexually. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do about that so mostly I did nothing. I have now dim memories of times that I came across LGBTQ people and only much later (usually decades later) realized that was what that had been.

Like so many things in life, as I grew into adulthood and went out into the world I began to see things that were new and different for me, and very quickly I began to catch on that there was a whole big chunk of reality I knew nothing about and hadn’t really let myself encounter. So a first step for me was just letting my eyes see things in a different way.

My seeking came from an inner yearning and eventually I began to get past just observing and head for real learning. Somehow or other I came across a news stand someplace (probably in a book store, remember book stores? We used to have stores full of books of all kinds …. And often a huge magazine rack and lots of newspapers too.) and there one day was a newspaper called The Advocate. And boy did I devour every word of that once I got it home.

Now my eyes were really open and I began to see love all around me, especially of the LGBTQ variety. I wanted in and while I worked on that I opened my heart as well as my eyes. And then let’s just say one day I was delivered by an angel and never looked back.

But then a whole new world opened up for me. I remember very nervously being escorted to my first ever gay bar by a group of my new friends. It was equal parts terrifying and exciting. But it also was incredibly liberating. And I kept thinking “you mean this was here all along and I didn’t know about it?” It was both like being shifted into a new dimension, which it was, and like being delivered from exile, which it also was.

And, to cut to the chase, I met my husband and he dragged me to church. And boy was that ever a revelation. There in that bastion of holiness, surrounded by beauty and glory and joy and salvation, there were integrated people of all sexualities, of all races, of all genders, of all ages, of all social stations. I could go on and on. Again I thought “you mean this was here all along?” And, of course, it was. And it is.

Because Christ is king. Christ is king of the dimension of love, where there are no divisions, where revelation is yours if only you will open your eyes, where learning to walk in love is the surest path to eternal citizenship.

The prophet Ezekiel [34:11-16, 20-24] gives the word of God concerning God’s lost sheep, who God promises to rescue, to gather, to feed … to “make them lie down” in rest and relief. And a shepherd will be set over them. And I think of Christ, my king, who brought me back from exile and into a new dimension of being one with God’s creation of me and with and through whom I have been able to live a long life of love.

Like the Psalmist [Psalm 100] I learned to dance and sing and rejoice, not just at church but at that gay bar too. I learned to be joyful with all my heart, to give thanks and to be present with song.

Like Paul writing to the Ephesians [1:15-23] I learned the meaning of having “the eyes of [my] heart enlightened” to know the hope to which I had been called.

And then I understood [Matthew 25:31-46] that the Son of Man has come in glory and his angels are all around us and we have been gathered into the dimension of his love because we have learned to walk in the love given to us in creation by God in whose image we all are created.

And Christ is our LGBTQ king.

Amen.

Last Sunday after Pentecost, Christ the King, Proper 29 Year A RCL (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100 Jubilate Deo; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Pride, Revelation, Responsibility

The anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion is June 28, which is next Weds. This is why “Pride” always fell on the final Sunday in June (until it didn’t). For years I never experienced Pride, I just wasn’t there then …. And then one year I was in San Francisco for the American Library Association and trying to get from one committee meeting to another there it was in my way … San Francisco Pride. OMG I might have said! Was I shocked? Yes, but not because of what I was seeing; I was shocked to realize I had blown off this responsibility for so long. I never made it to that committee meeting; I joined the ragtag bunch on the fringe of the parade (ok, we were just invited to join if we wanted and march along) and eventually there I was at Market and Castro—another name for “heaven” if you were a gay man at that time.

Back in real life I discovered “Pride” in Philadelphia was always on the wrong day (in theory so as not to compete with the big Pride in New York City). Nevertheless, and decades later, the day after I was ordained a priest it was Pride in Philadelphia. Bishop Walter Righter (who had famously been tried and acquitted of heresy for ordaining a gay man) was the parade guest of my diaconal gay outreach ministry, and all of the dozens of family members who had come to my ordination came along.

I said my first mass as a priest, we sang Te Deum Laudamus, I gave my mother a rose (my brother and I had spent hours the night before wandering around Center City looking for that rose!) and then everybody went to the parade. Bishop Righter was seated in a convertible, I was marching just behind him. At the end of the parade we went into Christ Church Pine Street to a planned Evensong where I preached. Then we all gathered at my house in exhaustion, and … in PRIDE of course! I’ll never forget my college friends exchanging reminiscences of the day with my 70-something Dad who had taken his paraplegic wife the whole route in her wheel chair alongside my brother and my mother (Dad’s ex!). How’s that for parental love?

God’s love is the sure foundation, for sure!

Sometimes. normal things are the things that are the most significant catalysts. Like my Dad taking his wife in her wheel chair to follow me on a gay pride parade the morning after I was ordained a priest. You couldn’t make a movie about this sort of thing, nobody would believe it. But there it was, God incarnate, love incarnate, love in action, love generating love. Not unlike God hearing the voice of Hagar’s outcast son and providing first life-saving water and then an eternal blessing [Genesis 21:8-21].

And oh my that Evensong, we sang and sang and sang and sang and sang … and prayed. And rejoiced. We gave thanks for God, for love, for each other, and for God’s having brought us to that moment. Love, supplication, God will answer [Psalm 86:5-7].

This all happened in 1998. Three weeks later I went to Amsterdam to the Gay Games and my life was changed again and again, almost daily. I couldn’t believe I was finding myself in a place where everybody was like me, instead of the usual reverse where I was the outcast. It was exactly what I was called to do: to look, to see, to receive the revelation, to reject the state of disconnection, which is sin and to be born over and over in total connection. Alive to God in Christ [Romans 6:1b-11].

[Matthew 10:24-39] “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” Be proud! Be proud of who God has made you to be in God’s own loving image, be proud of the love you share, be proud of those who love you in the form in which you are.

Proper 7 Year A 2023 RCL (Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17 Inclina, Domine; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10: 24-39)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Recognition is the Revelation of Resurrection

Faith … well, is hope, and trust, and loyalty, but most of all, it is love in action. The “eyes of our faith” are the eyes of our souls, open in even the most difficult moments to simple acts of love.

We have had a family crisis since the disappearance of Red Oval Farms Mini-Stoned Wheat Thins (go ahead and laugh, it’s supposed to be funny). We ran out sometime in the fall, and they aren’t being made any longer. And it isn’t just (like most complainers on the web) that we miss the big crackers (that, as reviewers notice, stopped breaking along that line several years ago when Nabisco acquired Red Oval Farms or some such and changed the recipe) but we were addicted specifically to the little ones, the minis, tiny squares, just the right size to fit in my Fiestaware ramekins …..

So, yesterday, after months of trying substitutes and searching online, we went to Trader Joe’s, because they supposedly had a good substitute. Trader Joe’s is always difficult, too busy, too small, too hard to navigate. But today it was really almost impossible … people were jumping in front of us to grab things, we couldn’t even get a good distance (for someone with my sightedness) from a shelf to see what was on it because people kept shoving us aside literally, and huffing loudly, to grab stuff all around us.

Btw, there was no such product in the store.

We left.

But … day before yesterday we went to our newest romantic place (LOL), the Market of Choice (a supermarket). There we didn’t need much and we gathered it quickly, but then I was struck almost literally dumb as I walked up to the checkout. There was a hot young fellow with a beard … normally I would just go for his lane … but right next to him, laughing and joking, was a really nice lady who has been taking care of us for months … oh no, I thought, what to do … fortunately my husband grabbed the cart while I was frozen in fear and headed for our lady friend’s aisle. And I’m glad, she is always so loving, and we love talking with her, and he made the right choice, even as I couldn’t.

See, I keep telling you, this walking in love stuff isn’t as easy as singing hymns and pretending you are pious at church where the Spirit has been whipped up and it seems like second nature.

In Acts 1 Peter preaches to immense crowds and at the end of the story we learn that 3000 were baptized at once! Because they welcomed his message of love.

The Psalmist asks (116: 10) what can we give God in return for the promise of love? The answer is faith, of course, which is walking in love, most easily expressed with a simple “thanks.”

In his first epistle Peter (1 Peter 1:22) reminds us that we purify our souls by “obedience to the truth so that [we] have genuine mutual love.” Love in action, always.

Theologians argue about this passage from Luke [24:13-35], and indeed the other resurrection appearances in the Gospels, where the disciples don’t recognize Jesus. Is he so changed that they cannot recognize him? Are they so disabled that they cannot see God?

No, it is just that, we don’t expect that the person standing next to us, cold, sweating, naked, hungry, afraid, dirty, whatever … is our risen Savior. And yet, it is exactly the person standing next to you, always, whoever it is, who is exactly God incarnate, with you, recognizing you, offering love, your Redeemer.

We do not see God because we are so busy being us. Just look. Just pay attention. God is with you. God is all around you. Resurrection is with us, near us, always.

I do not know why or how it is that suddenly we, God’s LGBTQ children, are the subject of social and political struggle. I suppose we likely are in for a bit of turbulence as we remind the world that we too not only have a right to live, but that we too are created by God in God’s own image and we too are called by God to be loving heirs of the dimension of love.

It is worth remembering that witness works, that by being visible, by being recognized as loving siblings, neighbors, colleagues, co-workers, (LOL even shoppers), we remind everyone around us that in recognition is the revelation of resurrection, the doorway to the dimension of love.

3 Easter Year A 2023 RCL (Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

As we are One

People I meet in the “real” world often are shocked to learn I am a priest. Usually, then, the first thing they say is “I try to read the Bible.” I always say, “Oh please don’t do that.” I know there is this idea out there somewhere that the Bible (btw, from the Greek for “book”) is a non-fiction work written by God. But, oh my … where do I start?

Well, first, God doesn’t write.

More importantly, the Bible is a collection of edited texts of oral histories most of which were written down thousands of years ago.

My first day in seminary I asked the professor who would become my favorite, because he always told me the truth, “why do we read a text that stopped thousands of years ago.” He smiled (how many thousands of times had he answered that question?). Then he said, “because it is the complete revelation of God’s action in the world.” He didn’t say how that day, but he did teach me over three years, to read the revelation as though it were alive today.

So, let’s just take a look at what we have this week.

From 1 Peter (4:1): “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.”

Peter is writing to the early church about persecution. But, how clearly does this passage speak to us now? How frightening and worrisome is this time we live in, in which, at least in theory, every person out there might carry death? How unsettling is it to be separated from people we love with only faint hope that we might be able to travel to one another again? Peter, in words taught to him by Christ, responds “Do not be afraid” and “trust in the righteousness of glory to come.”

From Acts 1:6-14: “When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying … constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”

What better definition do we need for “shelter in place and pray”?

From 1 Peter 5:6-11: “Humble yourselves …. Cast all your anxiety on [God], because [God] cares for you …. steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace … will … restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.”

Pray for strength, pray to give thanks for health, pray to give thanks for little things like toilet paper and chickpeas reappearing in markets, pray to give your anxiety to God, pray with thanksgiving for the love God has shown you in creation.

From Psalm 68: 8-10: “The earth shook, and the skies poured down rain, at the presence of God …. You sent a gracious rain, O God, upon your inheritance; you refreshed the land when it was weary. Your people found their home in it.

Theophany—the revelation of the presence of God among us—is both the fulsome recognition of God in nature, God in every breath, God in every heart, God in every breeze or drop of rain or every ray of sun, as well as the relief that follows the rain. It is how we find our “home.”

Where are we now in this pandemic? Ten weeks in, five months in? Time and space have melded for all of us sheltering in place, as it did for Christ’s disciples in that upper room, leaving us closer to God and each other, ever deeper in prayer and in love. How much more our dependence of technology has shifted from the isolation of heads buried in phones to the constant chatter of Zooms and Skypes and Facetimes, the “gracious rain” of our time. How much has this ordeal brought lgbt people closer to long desired social integration? In times like this everyone is in it together.

At the climax of Jesus’ ascension his prayer is for this time as for all time: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” Amen.

 

The Seventh Sunday Of Easter (Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Learning to Embrace Love

Learning is a tough slog. I guess that’s an American expression—another version might be “a tough row to hoe,” which means, “I’m doing this thing, it’s really difficult, but I’m getting there.”

Learning is more than simply acquiring knowledge, although that certainly is a big part of it. It requires putting the new knowledge to use, and that often means some kind of necessary change. In academics it means increasing the ability to create syntheses, to generate new knowledge. In life it’s even tougher, because the changes we have to make require introspection and shifting priorities, letting go of old ways and practicing new ways of being. Like I said, it can be a tough slog.

But, of course, a tough slog is a good slog, if at the end you have new knowledge or even a new life.

In the famous story of Adam and Eve in the garden (Genesis 3: 5) the serpent challenges Eve to eat the forbidden fruit so she and Adam may become wise “like God, knowing good and evil.” Of course, acquiring this knowledge—learning—changes everything. For millenia theologians have debated about this battle, but I think the point is that the learning revealed a new truth from which there was no going back. Learning can be tough precisely because change is forever.

The best way to live through and recover from any life-changing experience, of course, is to embrace love with every ounce of your being. Remember that love is the experience and giving of the energy of God that creates and transforms reality. Feel love, embrace love, and give love, to live.

In Matthew’s Gospel (4:1-11) we follow Jesus’ temptation. Not unlike the patter in the Genesis story we see a back and forth between Jesus and “the tempter.” Eventually Jesus triumphs and the tempter is vanquished with these words: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” And then it says “and suddenly the angels came and waited on him.”

This classic battle between the presence of love represented by God and God’s angels, on the one hand, and the absence of love represented by the temptation to embrace only self, on the other, reveals the simple truth that in all of life we have a choice between the swamp devoid of love that is of our own creation and the garden of love that is always there, if only we can learn always to choose it. Ah, if only we can learn—gain knowledge, grow, change.

The simple synthesis of these stories is this. To gain knowledge is to be empowered, enlightened by the revelation of truth, and to be utterly changed. This kind of change requires learning to embrace love, because it is in the giving of love that we best worship our creator and all of creation.

 

First Sunday in Lent (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

God is waiting for you in the silence*

I am in Portland, Oregon this weekend for the fortieth reunion of my graduating class at Lewis & Clark College. It has been a long time since I visited Portland, but it looks about the same to me even though I’m well aware of the phenomenal growth the city has experienced in just the past few years—let alone four decades. One thing that surprises me, although I’m sure it shouldn’t, is the substantial and substantially visible gay and lesbian population. It looks like Portland is a good place for lgbt people to live. I have seen that confirmed all through the weekend’s events as well. I suppose it makes sense that people I know would be lgbt affirming people. But on the other hand, I don’t remember it that way from college days.

Of course, as we discussed over and over at yesterday’s events, the early 1970s was a different time. The overriding feature of the era was the war in Viet Nam, and that’s pretty much how we all remember it. We brought the college to a brief halt the day after the shooting at Kent State. We remember the day Roe v. Wade decision was announced by the US Supreme Court. We remember LBJ’s passing almost as well as we remember Nixon’s demise. It was a tumultuous time altogether.

I kept trying to articulate to my friends last night how it was that I felt in those days about my sexuality, and I didn’t really succeed at saying it quite right. I probably won’t get it right here either. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t out, although I wasn’t. And it wasn’t exactly that I didn’t know, because I think I did. It was more that it didn’t have a name or an existential reality for me. I didn’t know just exactly what sort of thing it was so I couldn’t quite imagine what to do with it or about it. Coming to terms with it was more a matter of understanding than anything else. But as I tried to articulate this, what I kept coming back to was the idea that it was visibility that was critical for me. After college I went to graduate school at Indiana University, and then took up my first job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In both places my work and my social life were predominantly in the context of the music community, and gay people were prominent in that community. It was as I met attractive men with engaging personalities and watched them socializing together and listened to their stories that I began to understand my sexuality. And once I understood, then I was able to begin to explore. Well, maybe all of that should have happened in my adolescence, but it didn’t—not in those days.

I do remember coming out clearly. I won’t tell that story here, but I will recall that it was not thunderous or calamitous at all, except maybe in my own head. I remember that my friends and even co-workers greeted the news with smiles and understanding (not a few hinting they’d known all along). I felt like I had been welcomed to my own reality. Except that, by shifting my existential being just a tad, I had entered an entirely new dimension. And I would say now, looking back, that that was just exactly what happened.

There are two powerful stories about shifting dimensions in the scripture appointed for today. In 1 Kings 19 we have the wonderful story of Elijah’s search for God on the mountaintop and in Luke 8 we have the story of Jesus casting out demons called Legion. Both are pretty dramatic stories. The Elijah story narrates a theophany as God comes near preceded by wind, earthquake and fire—but it is the “sound of sheer silence” that announces, if you will, the presence of God.

The magic of theophany is in their metaphorical power. As revelation they tell us directly about the experience of God. But as reflection they allow us to look back into our own lives for the moments when God drew near. Wind, earthquake and fire—that reminds me of the time of seeking before I came out. In 1 Kings it keeps saying that there was wind but God was not in the wind. I think that’s about right. There were powerful forces buffeting me but God was not in the forces. God was in the sound of sheer silence that was left after the disruption ceased. God is always near, and God is always tending to us even in those powerfully life-altering moments. And we can find God’s real presence in the silence, when we set aside the disrupting distractions.

In Luke 8 Jesus casts demons out of a man who has so many his neighbors have shackled him. So powerful are these demons that when they are cast out they land in a herd of swine who promptly leap into the sea. It reminds me of the lonely nights and the emotion-filled times that preoccupied me before I came out. And when I had come out, it was as though the demons had not only left me but, indeed, run off into the metaphorical sea to drown. My life was healed because I was no longer cast out, but in the warm smiles and understanding hugs of my friends I was made free. This is the power Jesus shows us. We have the power to be healed if we can give up the deceptive disrupting distraction of letting demons overpower the reality God has made for us. God has made us lgbt in God’s own image. As Jesus says, we are to continually declare how much God has done for us.

There is one more tantalizing passage in today’s scripture, in Galatians 3 where Paul catalogs the dichotomies of human existence and says they no longer matter, we all are free in Christ. And we are free in Christ because we are one in Christ. We are one in Christ because we all are the children of God, made in God’s own image.

In the U.S. we’re holding our breath waiting for the Supreme Court to announce decisions on same-sex marriage. It is a little bit like huddling in the cave waiting for the wind and earthquake and fire to pass. Whatever they decide, remember that God is in the sound of sheer silence, looking for you, waiting, for you.

* Proper 7 (1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a; Psalm 42 and 43; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Jesus is the chief cornerstone*

Whatever do we think we are doing pretending we are Christians if we do not believe in this one thing, that Jesus is the chief cornerstone?

I think many Christians I know do not believe in Jesus at all; they believe in our church as a comfortable place to hear comfortable words. But many would be hard put to say that they really believed in Jesus as the chief cornerstone. Because most of us either do not believe that there ever was a guy named Jesus, or if we believe that, we somehow cannot believe that he was a part of God. It really is almost too much to ask of the human imagination.

But I think it is the crux. It is the lever. It is the very thing that automates our faith. Unless we believe that a real guy really was God incarnate and still is really part of our consciousness, then we are lost.

As a gay priest, as a priest who does believe in Jesus, as a priest who does not believe much of the secular mythology of Jesus but who adheres strictly to the Jesus of scripture, I have to say we have a very wonderful Jesus this week, whose words to us this week in Mark’s Gospel are, “Do not fear, only believe.” This is the central point my friends whatever your sexuality, but especially if you are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgendered, because God has made you that way in God’s image. You are Beloved of Jesus. All you have to do, is believe.

So what does that mean, to believe? I would start with understanding that the Gospels, although very old and very archaic, are also very real. They are true stories. And there is testimony from other historical sources of the time. Jesus was … really. And then there is the harder part. The resurrection. I know, it challenges all of us. All I can say is that the Gospel never says Jesus got up from being dead and walked away. It says, rather, that “he was raised.” It was God’s action.

Our theology takes several leaps, there is no question about that. But all of those are human attempts to describe the reality of God, which is not human, but which is divine. God’s reality is everywhere, and in everything at all times. We are surrounded by the revelations of God’s very real presence. But we also can look at the scripture for guidance, even we who are lgbt Christians. This week we are doubly blessed. In the 130^th psalm we resound with the idea of the pain of love lost “my soul waits for the LORD, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” In 2 Corinthians “For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has.” These gifts remind us that every life is precious, and that every breath of engaged love between humans is precious.

Jesus is the cornerstone on which the whole house is built, because it is from Jesus’ very human experience that we begin to see revealed the truth about God’s universality of love. Do not fear my friends, only believe.

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*Proper 8 (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalm 130 De profundis; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Mark 5:21-43)

God is holding you fast*

I think you’ve got to love the opening scripture for today (Genesis 32:24): “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” The “man,” of course, is God; this lesson is about how Jacob fights with God all night long on the banks of a river, and how God kicks Jacob in the privates, and then eventually, at daylight, God blesses Jacob, bent over and sore and limping away.

It sounds a little bit like Congress right?

Well, really it sounds a lot like real life, all the time. And, of course, although this story is from the oral tradition of the Hebrew people, the reality is that whether it is true or not is irrelevant. The story is revelatory, because it explains to us something about life and God and the real world. It is always a struggle (life, that is), and the blessing comes in the dawn, after the fight, and often everybody gets wounded.

Well, that was uplifting!

A couple of my friends are on the cover of the local gay paper this week. They just got married in New York state. Finally equal, or at least, more equal than before. How’s that for a marathon struggle? Gay people actually have rights as humans in many countries—just not many in the United States. In many of those other countries, gay people can marry: 1998 Netherlands, 2003 Canada … it is old news. So it is in the U.S. where we supposedly have no established religion where the so-called “Christian” right keeps people of color and women and gay people oppressed. Inequality is all over–we have no health care to speak of, we have few rights, and the rights that we have are not accorded willingly to us. We have to fight for them over and over.

Just like Jacob fighting God all night at the Jabok.

So go read that whole story (Genesis 32: 22-31; yes, I know it says “hip-socket”—in the Old Testament, whenever it says hip socket or feet it means privates). It is a story of redemption. It is a story of, not a magical miracle, but of how it goes in real life. God is with us in our struggles. Do you think God is fighting Jacob? No my friends, Jacob is fighting, and God is holding him fast.

God is holding you fast.

Go, get married, enjoy your redemption.

Remember to sing Hallelujah!

*Proper 13 (Genesis 32: 22-31; Psalm 17: 1-7, 16; Romans 9: 1-5; Matthew 14:13-21)
©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

We are all born blind*

When I was about 11 or so, my dad had a terrible car accident. I remember it was the 4th of July and he had just shipped into Long Beach from Taiwan. We’d greeted him at the pier, and we’d had a great reunion evening, and then early that morning he’d taken the car in to the ship to get the stuff he’d bought in Taiwan, including some magnificent rosewood furniture. But, the main thing was, he’d brought Chinese fireworks for the 4th. So all day we waited for him but he never came; some time in the late afternoon Mother got “the” phone call—he’d been in a wreck and had been taken to San Diego where there was a better military hospital. (You know, right, that this is a fifty page story, so I’m doing my best here to cut to the chase.) Mother had to buy a new car [!] with the money in her purse … it was a horrid chevy station wagon. She paid for it off the used car lot, then she and I drove to San Diego to see Dad. She got a neighbor to babysit the kids (my much younger siblings). Dad was in traction with broken hips. But let’s just cut to the chase. Three months later, Dad is home, and they sit me down in the living room after the kids are asleep, and they explain to me how bad men will try to touch me. It took me years to figure out that really nice Navy nurse (a young red-headed guy) had put the moves on Dad, and Dad had ratted him out.

So, let’s see, I was 11. And it was 13 years later before I could let the eyes of my soul, “born blind” open up and realize it was okay to love another boy.  And this is the value of today’s Gospel for gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people everywhere. Because we are all born “blind” my friends. And we have to let our eyes be opened if we are going to experience the beauty of life God has made for us. In the story you might notice that there is a lot of chatter about how Jesus made the blind boy see, but there isn’t any detail about the process. Okay, a little bit of mud. But, it isn’t the mud that opens the boys’ eyes anymore than it was mud that opened my own eyes when I finally came out. One day I just realized I was gay, and I just wanted to stop playing blind. You know what, in 1975 it was harder than you might think to come out. It took the blink of an eye to come out to myself; but it took months to find a sympathetic gay person to take me by the metaphorical hand and show me how to find the community into which I had been born. All jokes aside, his name was Billy, and I’ll never forget the joy and laughter with which he welcomed me into the reality of my own self, and drew me toward the community where I could and would be nurtured.

You know, I intended this story to follow on from the gospel about the man born blind. But now that I think about it, it follows too from the story about the selection of David, the least of  Samuel’s sons. Later we will learn that David was “the fairest of men” and that his love for Jonathan surpassed the love of God. So let’s see, sometimes these weird stories we tell about our own lives are pretty much like these stories where God chooses the right one, which is why the Bible is considered revelatory.

“For once you were in darkness but now in the Lord you are light.” You are light. You. Are light. Let your light shine friends, let it illumine the world.

Let me put it more bluntly—BE GAY! Or, REJOICE AND BE GAY! And let your light shine my friends.
*4 Lent (1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9:1-41)

©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.